Tennessee State Park Fun: Natchez Trace State Park

Of all the parks that I am exploring, this is the one that nobody needs directions to. If you live in West Tennessee, you have driven through it hundreds or thousands of times. It is the stretch on Interstate 40 between Jackson and the Tennessee River where the farmland gives way to thick pine forests.  Just take exit 116, and go south. The ranger station is less than five minutes away.

For all the stomping around this state I have done, it is embarrassing to say, but I have only been there a couple of times in my life.  So in trying to come up with a new place for close to home adventures, it is hard to ignore that giant green blob on the map just to the east. We finally got a sunny Saturday a few weeks ago, so Brody and I headed that way. Here are a few observations....

1) The place is gi-normous. Besides the typical State Park campgrounds and cabins, there is an equestrian center, a shooting range, and an archery range. There are 4 lakes, including the 690 acre Pin Oak Lake, some with boat rental facilities. There are 50 miles of hiking trails which include a 40 mile loop with over night back country sites.  There are 50 miles of multi use trails for mountain bike, ATV, or horseback riding (these are essentially old fire roads), and there are 250 miles of dedicated horseback riding trails in the south end of the park.

While a 5 or 6 hour visit to most State Parks will allow you to cover the vast majority of what there is to see, you could go at least a dozen times to Natchez Trace and not cover the same ground twice.

2) The visitors are spread out too. The size of the place allows for easy access to solitude. Even if there are a lot of visitors, there is no real central area for people to congregate. Our visit was late in the morning on a Saturday with about the most ideal weather we ever get here, and for the most part we didn't encounter anyone until late in the afternoon. Yes, there were some birthday parties and we did see a Boy Scout troop toward the last parts of the trail, but compared to other parks I have visited, the crowds were thin. There were plenty of good spots on the bank of Cub Lake to fish, and I didn't see a single boat. The picnic area where I parked, had no cars in the morning, and one other car in the afternoon. 

There may have been two other people fishing on the whole lake.

3) It can be a little navigationally challenging. So the free map that you pick up from the ranger station, is a little hard to read, mostly because there are so many trails and roads that it is hard to pack it all into an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. The muti-use trails all have signs, but there are a lot of them and you really have to be careful not fly past them on the main road. There are parking areas everywhere and they are really hard to spot on the map. When Brody and I set out on our adventure, I could only vaguely discern where the Cub Lake Trail actually began and ended. We parked in a random looking picnic area, crossed the bridge across the lake, and worked our way west through the complex of cabins to eventually find the trail head. There was a sign stating that it was 5.9 miles long and that you needed to carry half a gallon of water per person and plan on 3 to 4 hours to complete it. That seemed a little over the top to me. It was a little before noon. We had two bottles of water and some chocolate chip cookies. I knew we would have lunch a little late but otherwise we would breeze through it. My main concern was that I really could not tell where the trail actually ended, but that worry was a good six miles away. 

The trail followed the lake shore, first south and then back north. Views of the water were plentiful and there was even a really nice back country shelter on the far eastern shore. Toward the end, there were some pretty extreme swampy parts that involved some technical stump jumps, but we emerged onto a road around 2:30. Of course I really had no idea where we were. 

So Brody got his first experience with my personal favorite game  in outdoor pursuits. I call it, "Find the Truck". This was an easy round of it. My favorite episodes of "Find the Truck" usually involve a winter night in on a secluded road in the Smokies. This time we just followed the road for a bit until I recognized the turnoff we had taken that morning, and the truck emerged!

The sign was for a birthday party but it was really appropriate.

So if you haven't been to Natchez Trace in a while, you should definitely give it a visit. Just remember to give yourself a little extra time for getting lost. But in reality, a little navigational uncertainty only helps with the feeling of discovery and adventure. And I have never lost a vehicle yet!

Tennessee State Park Fun: Pinson Mounds

I really don't remember how old I was, but I imagine around 12 or so. One summer morning, when my cousin from Pikeville was visiting, my grandfather took us to Pinson Mounds and turned us completely loose for most of the day. I don't think "helicopter parenting" was much of a term for his generation. Looking back, I guess he stayed in his truck or the museum, but we spent what seemed like the next few hours wandering around the woods in the stifling July heat. I remember honestly not knowing if we would ever find civilization again.

Of course that wasn't my first time going there. During elementary school, every other field trip seemed to take us to Pinson Mounds. The mob of kids would rush through the museum, bound up the stairs to Sauls Mounds, and spend the rest of the afternoon knocking each other off the twenty foot tall jungle gym on the playground (since made much more safe). This was some educational stuff. But soon the field trips and random summer adventures ended, and for probably 20 plus years, I didn't go back.

When Brody was five years old, and really starting to develop some hiking endurance, I re-discovered the place. Our first trip there was in October. After going up Sauls Mound, I wanted to really see how far we could go, so I led us down the Nature Trail, which is about 1.25 miles at most. We had quite the adventure, and for a while again, I wasn't sure if we were going to find civilization. He had a slight tumble down one of the steepest gullies (afterwards he would say that I "saved his life") and we encountered a really bad looking cotton mouth coiled up on the trail at the Earthworks trail junction. I cut a little branch off a tree with my pocket knife and poked the snake until he swam off in the creek. From Brody's perspective, we might as well have fought off a dragon. He still remembers the spot on the trail.

Since that day, we have continued to go back several times a year. It is about 20 miles away from home, so it makes for a quick trip. But besides being close to home, and full of neat historical stuff, it is just a really nice park for several reasons.

1) The trail system is very well developed and really has something for everyone. There are paved trails, gravel trails, dirt trails, and boardwalks. I have a hard time thinking of any other parks in this area with near the amount of varied types of walkways. Most other State Parks are either going to have single track hiking trails, or roads that you share with vehicles.  

Here is the map at the entrance, probably updated around Reagan's second term. But I would take a picture with my phone to be safe.

A WORD OF WARNING: Last weekend, Brody and I tried to go down the Hudson Branch trail, the only trail we had not been on. The trail is marked, but it is closed at the creek bottom crossing. The first bridge is washed out and the other bridges deeper into the swamp look pretty rough. We tried to use the alternate route on the map, but after crossing the pond levee and wandering around in circles for almost an hour, we could not find the trail. I ran into a Park Ranger later, and he said that it had become too expensive to keep that section open, but nobody could remember how long ago that was. If you want to try it, better wait till a very dry season, and bring your swamp boots, and GPS.

The boardwalk is very well maintained, and the Forked Deer River overlook is a great place for lunch. There are massive Cypress trees in the river bottom, some of the largest I have seen. Who knows how they escaped being logged. 

2) The place is a great fitness park. You can wear yourself out until your heart is content. You can ride your bike along the paved and gravel trails, then do a couple of miles of trail running, then run up the 125 steps to the top of Sauls Mound! And you won't be alone, even in pretty bad weather, you still see a lot of folks biking and running. 

These stairs are the only activity that I have ever seen get Brody out of breath.

3) There are always nice views. Yes, of course there is the view from Sauls Mound (the second tallest Indian mound in the U.S.), but one thing that really strikes me about this place is the large amount of open country. You just don't see this amount of large maintained fields in other nearby parks, such as Chickasaw or Natchez Trace. The majority of the trails wind in and out of these open fields. And a couple of years ago, all of the trees were removed off the major mounds and replaced with native grasses. In the spring and fall, you literally cannot take a bad picture. 

You can really go fly a kite here, and not just in the figurative sense.

Bonus Points: What many folks do not realize, is that the park borders State Forestry land. The gates leading from the main road are locked, but on foot, you can wander over into it. Just to the west of the park exit, there is a massive grove of 50 year old poplar trees, evenly spaced with wide grassy paths between them, perfect for mid October colors. I am pretty sure that hiking there is probably legal. And yes, these are the things you discover when you are trying to find a trail that hasn't existed in this century.

g